You should use asset_tag if you want to access /assets/* files.
3.1.0 referring to /assets/* was a bug, look at this https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/3-1-stable/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/asset_tag_helper.rb#L342-343 is documented that image_tag refers to /images/* files and is for backward compatibility.

So it's <%= asset_tag 'fortythree-logo-small.png', 'images' %> from now on, then? Feels a bit less DRY if you ask me, but perhaps that's the trade-off for backwards compatibility.

Actually there's definitely a bug in 3.1.1 related to this, let me review it a bit more and I will get back to you again

Absolutely.

PS. Same bug if I'm using the image-url('file.png') in a scss or sass file, probably related. Renders url(/images/file.png) as well.

Hi, maybe I am only making noise here, but as far as I can remember, image_tag hasn't changed it's behavior after the asset pipeline release.

I've tried 3.1.0.rc4, 3.1.1.rc1 and branch 3-1-stable (right now). All returned /images/ from image_tag helper.

Sorry if I am missing something.

In 3.1.0 (final) image_tag used /assets/image.png if I turned on the asset pipeline, as I would expect. My images just continued loading fine.

In the latest 3.1.1rc1 (pulled 5 mins ago), the image_tag still now returns /images/image.png, which is the old behavior. There has either been a policy change here or a bug.

(If it's a policy change I don't quite like it; using image_tag to get /assets is the most logical way it should work, if we asked specifically to have the asset pipeline turned on.)

Fantastic, works fine now. Still sass-rails gives /images/image.png when using the image-url helper, I've commented more lengthily over there.

Thanks Santiago!

I don't know if it's related but sass-rails helpers have the same issue (rails/sass-rails#57), image-url produces url(/images/) instead of url(/assets/)

I'm using latest stable rails 3.1.3 and image-url("icons/spinner.gif") generated /images/icons/spinner.gif instead of /assets/icons/spinner.gif -- what gives?

EDIT: I was missing require "sprockets/railtie" in my application.rb - adding it fixed the problem!